Coalition of nonprofit groups takes issue with “revolving door” ban on lobbyists entering government service; seeks exemption for charities and social welfare organizations’ lobbyists
Though intended to protect the public interest, President Obama’sexclusion of former lobbyists from certain government posts is screening outsome registered lobbyists who share the Administration’s vision of thepublic interest, as reported in Tuesday’s The New York Times.
The “revolving door” ban on lobbyists entering government” (section 1(1) of Executive Order Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel)precludes anyone who was a registered lobbyist from working for anyexecutive agency they had lobbied in the past two years. The ban isdesigned to screen out those who gothrough “the revolving door between government service and the privatesector in order to achieve personal gain at the expense of the publicinterest.” (Think of characters like Nick Naylor, the chief spokesmanfor Big Tobacco’s chief spokesman and a “massmurderer/profiteer/bloodsucker/pimp” in the satirical novel andmovie Thank You for Smoking.) But the ban also screens out some people who don’t fit that profile.People like registered lobbyist Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacydirector for Human Rights Watch.
Thearticle reports that a coalition of nonprofit groups, including the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest, hasstarted a campaign to lift the ban for lobbyists for charities and social welfare organizations that (in the Center’s words) “lobby for a public purpose rather than for a financial bottomline.” According to this coalition, the ban on registeredlobbyists is a crude proxy for the real culprit, lobbying byprofit-maximizing people on behalf of profit-maximizing interests.
David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior adviser, says this distinction is too subtle and the need to increase public trust in government is too great. The Times quotes him saying that “youcan’t have carve-outs for lobbyists you like and exclude those that youdon’t. It would be very hard for people to understand that distinction.This is one of those cases where we’ve had to sacrifice the help of alot of very valuable people.”
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